AN: Recap to some of your questions in your reviews: Rory told Logan before he finalized his marriage. But she didn't want to marry for just for this one reason. They had so much unspoken during that time and I think Rory also agreed that she wasn't the right mindset to start something 'not vegas' in that moment. And of course Logan has regrets - it's why he is there. But today's chapter will also show some light on his side. I'll get to Odette later, but Odette was someone who admitted to wanting a relationship him (unlike Rory) and I think there's nothing wrong with him going forward with the wedding - he too had a right to try to be happy. I know this isn't something people love to read about or consider - but it is possible to love different people in different ways at the same time, it doesn't mean he was entirely unhappy all those years. All I am proposing here is that he always had an underlying hurt and Rory has always been the 'one that got away', and those things are not mutually exclusive.

Some glimpses into the past five years will come, but I don't want to use them more than necessary.

Chapter 8

January 25th, 2017, Kensington, London

It was late and Logan should've been fast asleep. He had an early morning flight to catch - a business trip to Munich with a day full of meetings ahead of him. Yet after he'd gotten home an hour ago, eaten some take-away sushi Odette had left for him from the fridge and gulped down a small light beer to extinguish his thirst, he wasn't really feeling like climbing into bed with her.

Now that they'd actually decided to give this a try, after a year of keeping things casual, it did feel like cheating to climb into bed with her when his mind was somewhere else completely.

Before he'd left his office he'd been on the phone with Rory for almost an hour and just like at Christmas when he'd been to the States, she'd enforced her opinion that she didn't want him turning his life around for her, her self-esteem not exactly being at her highest either, and that doing that for the baby was something he needed to think about carefully. She'd never once said he couldn't be a part of the baby's life - but she had a number of valid concerns already then and he didn't blame her. Her concerns were valid. And her bringing these things up was not trying to convince him to stay away, but simply looking for assurance.

They'd both taken a month to think about things and then talk again. And now, as expected Ror mind had thought out tens of further concerns. Among other things she was concerned about him being there but being absent - geographically mostly, about the influence of the Huntzberger clan on the baby's well-being and the possible shame the child, would feel once their circumstances would become clear to him or her. Rory knew first hand what something like that felt like and no matter how much Logan had tried to convince both of them that times were different, in the high society circles reputations and scandals like this still mattered. So much, in fact, that they could destroy careers, companies and reputations if handled the wrong way.

Logan now sat at his desk, having just stared at the ultrasound photograph in front of him, thinking over one particular train of thought Rory had shared with him tonight.

"What if something happens to you and your family contests my share of the custody? They could take her away from me, all the way across the ocean. They're the ones with the good lawyers and resources to care for her. What if they just have my background checked or even forge evicendence and make me look like an unfit mother. Here I am, jobless and homeless and... depressed…," Rory had listed, sounding very upset. Naturally she wasn't really jobless nor homeless - it was just her definition of her situation, which was more than a little self-critical. "They might even present you with such evidence and convince you that you're filing for full custody to protect the baby," she'd added, inhaling sharply, barely holding it together.

Logan would've loved to just reply that she was being ridiculous - that she was overreacting or paranoid, but he knew she wasn't. He had himself told her stories how his family had dealt with a number of scandalous situations if they needed to clean things up or get their way. Even if they didn't do things like that, threats of those things would be always hanging above her head. Threats of shame and someone continuing to tell her time and time again, when she did become into contact with them, how she wasn't good enough would always be within grasp if his family became aware of this.

So here Logan was, indeed considering doing the thing most people would've blamed him for heartlessness and irresponsible behavior. But it was far from something he wanted to do... He couldn't even say it.

He had no doubts Rory would be an incredible mother, and sure - he knew that if it came to it he would insist she get help she needed to climb out of her low point. It was just rough out there and one was allowed to stumble before finding her way again. He was actually seeing this as a negotiation tactic if he were to be honest about it - ensure he stayed out of it if she promised to take his money and get all the help she needed - therapy, college, a job - whatever she needed. But this was a result of desperately pushing his own feelings aside and trying to think about this rationally. He couldn't allow himself to feel all the emotions associated with this, it would hurt too much if they were then moments later just taken away. It was easier to not think about something that didn't look like it was meant to be.

Suddenly Logan's phone rang and he tucked the single item of proof he had of the baby into his drawer under a pile of papers.

"Hey, sis?" Logan answered, hoping that talking to his sister would cheer him up. For a moment he actually felt like telling her, but then he remembered they'd agreed with Rory to not tell anyone about his paternity.

But instead of a joyous response, all he could hear were sobs.

"What's wrong?" Logan asked, sternly.

"It's all over the papers, Logan…," Honor whimpered.

"What is?" Logan asked.

"My life's ruined… Josh… the kids…," Honor whimpered, barely making sense.

Logan flipped open his laptop with his other hand, realizing it might be quicker to google it.

Page Six and US Weekly were full of pictures of Honor with some guy. Logan even thought he'd seen the guy somewhere, some party maybe but couldn't place the name. The compromising part about these pictures was that the guy was leading Honor into the Ritz-Carlton in the darkness of the night, with his hand on the small of her back, the two looking obviously cozy.

"It was just one time… We didn't even…," Honor began, unable to finish a full thought. "Josh and I had had a fight and we'd been in a bad place for a while. I told him in therapy just last week that I'd kissed someone, and now… all those weeks of work... Now he not only knows that, he also thinks I lied and it was actually more…," Honor cried.

Logan realized the situation was bad, and Honor was certainly not flawless in all of this. But it wasn't his place to judge - he knew what kind of double standards were sometimes thrown around in cases like this. It was half expected men slept around, especially in their circles, while women at the same time were considered slutty.

"Hey, it's going to be fine. You'll work it out, you're already going to therapy so that's the good part," Logan said, recalling well how happy Honor had been about their advances when he'd seen her over Christmas. Josh and Honor had been working things out.

"God, I don't know… They even had pictures of the kids, they must've snuck into their school somehow," Honor added in a shaky voice.

Logan could indeed see the photoshopped image with text theoretising how the kids would be divided up between the Huntzbergers and the Rothchilds. Her whole marriage was being picked apart in front of the public.

Logan knew then that he was going to pull every string he could to have the pictures taken down - control the situation anyway he could. Sometimes throwing money at the problem helped. But with social media things were a lot less likely to be completely forgotten. It was in that moment he also realized for the first time what kind of a field day the press was going to have with Rory, an unemployed struggling writer who claimed to have been knocked up by him - not only claiming her as a possibly unfit parent but also probably accusing her of intentionally getting pregnant. He could already hear what his mother's comment in his mind once she heard. He could already imagine the baby, whenever seen anywhere in public with him or with Rory, getting pulled into those stories. It was not the life he wanted for any of them.

Maybe it was indeed better that he retreated and gave what he had within grasp a real go, instead of being half-there, if that? Maybe it was just easier to move on and accept that while he and Rory had created something miraculous - a result of an odd event of Rory's birth control not working on the last night they spent together, as the final act of their wild ride - that the three of them were never meant to be a family and the purpose of this child was to steer Rory back to a better place, and what he could do was diminish Rory's concerns by offering the child the best life possible? A life that looked like the Stars Hollow childhood that Rory had had, filled with people who loved and cared for them instead of throwing them to the vultures. It was that much that he loved her. The thought hurt, and it'd be another month or so before he would actually propose this to Rory, but the thought had already begun to form.

September 24th, 2022, Boston and London

"Hey! Look how long you make me wait to hear back from you. Ten days, Logan!" Honor scolded his brother first thing as the video chat image came to view.

Logan sat on his bed at his hotell room just after breakfast, wanting to get this call over with. It was already long overdue.

"Hey. And I'm sorry... My fault, I know," Logan held up his hands, admitting his fault. Ten days ago so much had been undecided he really didn't know what to tell her.

"So, you're not partying your health away?" Honor said, with a concerned tone.

"No, no partying. Though I am not sure I'll make promises about tonight, as I will be seeing Finn since, what, a year?" Logan suggested.

"Don't get me wrong, you deserve a party too. Just, you know - don't forget you're no longer 25," Honor added, almost sounding motherly.

"Yeah, I know," Logan replied, sighed and indeed realized that he had now a whole other reason to want to stay healthy for now.

"So, what is it?" Honor asked, for a moment getting distracted by Josh in the background, coming into her study to ask her something. The two were still together, and while they'd had another bump on the road in form of a miscarriage six months ago, they'd regained each-other's trust as spouses and at least to Logan, they appeared stronger together than ever. Mistakes happened, it was what one did with the lessons from them that mattered.

She knew to ask this because Logan had left her a message saying he had something to tell her.

"Where are you anyways?" Honor asked before he had a chance to find the words.

"Boston," Logan replied.

"Boston? What's in Boston?" Honor said, sounding rather confused. Sure, Colin had lived there for a couple of years but had moved to Greenwich in 2017, so there didn't seem to be any evident connection.

"My daughter is," Logan confessed, the words coming out as strained, forcing him to clear his throat. "My daughter and her mother are here. Rory Gilmore, you might remember her?" Logan replied, unsure which part of the news was the bigger news.

"I'm sorry, did you say daughter?" Honor exclaimed, clearly more concerned about the first part. Her eyes were wide and she indeed looked like she'd just heard him wrong.

"Yes, I said daughter. She's five years old, looks like a spitting image of her mother," Logan added. It was strange, he almost wanted Honor to comment on Rory. Something, anything - that she was surprised? Happy? Disappointed in him maybe even? Anything?

"And what, Rory didn't tell you until now?! How could she?!" Honor exclaimed, clearly getting the very wrong idea.

"Honor," Logan tried to get a word in but Honor just went on a trail of word vomit on how she couldn't believe Rory would do something like that, and how much she'd liked Rory but how something like this was unforgivable.

"Honor!" Logan said again, raising his voice a little.

"What, Logan?" she said, finally giving him a moment to speak.

"She told me when she was 12 weeks pregnant. I've known all this time. And I am truly, deeply, sorry I didn't tell you. I sure as hell have wanted to," Logan exhaled.

"You, what?" Honor couldn't believe him.

"I'm sorry… but we decided it was better this way. To protect her… and Rory…," he sighed.

"Five years? So that's… what… 2017?" Honor began to do the math.

"Born July 1st 2017," Logan said.

"So before you got married… and Odette..?" Honor tried to piece together the puzzle pieces, referring to the time of conception.

"Before we made it exclusive. I never told O but she did find out. Rory sent me pictures sometimes - probably that's how… though I'm not sure… Odette didn't tell me she knew until May this year… around the time when she was bedridden. I wasn't supposed to tell anyone - we had an NDA. Emma - she's not even legally mine," Logan confessed, feeling like everything was just pouring out of him. Rory had always worried about Odette finding out, just as well as his mother, but Odette had proved to Logan with her actions by keeping quiet without him knowing how she he could've trusted her all these years.

"Oh, Logan…," Honor chimed with compassion in her tone. "And Emma - that's her name?" she asked.

Logan was expecting more yelling, fury… but all he got was sorrow and compassion.

"Yeah. Emma Lorelai Gilmore, but most people seem to call her just 'Em'," Logan said.

"Well, have you got pictures? What's she like?" Honor inquired, looking like she was also a little emotional.

"Nothing too recent," Logan began, and continued to send her a couple, realizing one of the things he really hoped to achieve that day when they went to the park together was to snap a fresh photograph of Emma. He'd read how keeping his expectations low in these first encounters was key, and surely this was humble enough?

Honor had a million questions, going on to ask both about the girl and Rory.

Logan had needed to go into his reasons and he did, for the second time in a short while, while respecting Rory's privacy as well. Thankfully, Honor hadn't need much convincing, knowing well what kind of press frenzy had surrounded them at the time and how Logan had dealt with all kinds of craziness through work and thanks to their dad's pre-retirement crisis of needing to prove himself. But mostly Honor was just happy her brother was mending what still could be.